polish name?

Question

my grandfathers name is tuterow is it polish or german?

Answer 1

The best lead I could find is to suggest you email this person:

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/ROOTS/2004-06/1088041463

They once posted:

my name is marilyn tutorow. and my family is in all of the differed. spelling. and my ggrandfathers. name is john v. in nc, and john moved to Indiana, some time in the 1860 or 1870's. john name in Indiana change to john william tuterow. and some time john cange to tutorow. we know this because, in the civil war. service records. have it in records. i got a papers with all the info. john married 5 times. in his live. john out lived his wife. and john died in summitville. indiana. don't know the year. if any one know's of him post messages. thanks..marilyn....

They might be able to give you a lead.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

Most likely, Russian, although the spelling suggests that the family might have lived in Poland (which was a part of the Russian Empire before 1918 and until 1939 extended into what is now Ukraine and Byelarus). In Polish, just like in German, "w" is pronounced as "v".

A quick Russian-language search on Google returns, among other things, a mention of PFC Ivan Tuterov (born 1919, drafted into the Red Army in 1939, MIA in April 1945), a news item about a 2005 youth wrestling tournament in Cheboksary, where a young wrestler named Ruslan Tuterov won the tournament in the 54 kg category among the boys born in 1988-89, and a background piece on the computer science department of Tomsk State University, where a V.V. Tuterov is listed among those awarded advanced degrees in 2001-02:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%D0%A2%D1%8E%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Answer 3

I looked up the surname at World Connect, a collection of family trees. Here are links to what I found:

http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi

Interestingly enough, the furthest back these people have gone is to North Carolina.

From my knowledge of German, I would say it is not German. I would suggest you email the researchers at the link, however; they may have more information.